The invention relates to an appliance for deployment and tracking of an unmanned underwater vehicle as claimed in the precharacterizing clause of claim 1.
Unmanned underwater vehicles are used, for example, for mine destruction, are remotely controlled from an airborne or waterborne platform, such as a helicopter or surface vessel, and are deployed into the water from the platform. A deployment appliance is used for this purpose and has a carrier which holds the underwater vehicle in a holder and is attached to a holding cable. The holding cable is unwound from the platform. The deployment appliance is advantageously equipped with a tracking apparatus which allows the unmanned underwater vehicle that has been deployed into the water and is a distance from the deployment appliance to be tracked, that is to say allows its position to be determined continuously. The tracking apparatus operates on the SSBL or USBL principle and has a plurality of hydrophones, which are arranged at a distance from one another, for receiving the sound pulses which are transmitted by a responder arranged on the underwater vehicle. The bearing angle to the underwater vehicle is calculated from the time-shifted reception of the sound pulses and from the phase shift that results from this between the electrical hydrophone output signals, and the distance to the underwater vehicle is calculated from the delay time of the sound pulses between the responder and the tracking device.
In a system for detection and destruction of underwater mines (EP 0 535 044 B1), the unmanned underwater vehicle which is equipped with an explosive charge is remotely controlled from a submerged platform, and the position of the underwater vehicle is determined continuously using a tracking apparatus, which is arranged on the platform and operates in the manner described above. The platform has a deployment appliance for deploying the underwater vehicle into the water.
It has already been proposed for an underwater platform such as this with a tracking device to itself be in the form of a deployment appliance for an unmanned underwater vehicle. The underwater platform is attached to a deployment cable and, for example, is lowered into the water from a helicopter. The holding apparatus for the unmanned underwater vehicle is arranged on the underneath of the platform, and the platform is equipped with its own electric-motor propulsion system. Once the platform has been deployed and has been released from the deployment cable, the platform is stabilized about its roll, pitch and yaw axes by means of vertically and horizontally acting maneuvering drive systems. The three-dimensional stabilization of the tracking device that this results in allows the position of the underwater vehicle to be found accurately even in poor sea-weather conditions, greatly reducing the risk of loss of tracking, that is to say of the acoustic link between the underwater vehicle and the tracking device breaking down. A three-dimensionally stabilized deployment appliance such as this has a relatively large volume, is heavy and is highly complex to manufacture.
The invention is based on the object of providing a lightweight, physically small deployment appliance with a tracking apparatus for an unmanned underwater vehicle, which is also suitable for handling on small platforms and ensures that the tracking apparatus operates acoustically without interference.